Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless communications networks. Particularly, the present invention relates to a method for updating packet-switched mobile networks.
Description of the Related Art
Presently, packet-switched mobile networks, such as networks complying with the 2G/3G and LTE (Long-Term evolution) standards, are seeing an increase in terms of number of new users and data throughput requirements. The ever increasing availability of new advanced user equipment, such as smartphones and tablets, has made available to the end users a huge number of client applications, many of them causing a frequent transmission and reception of data.
This involves that packet-switched mobile networks should manage an ever increasing amount of signaling information. As it is known to those skilled in the art, with signaling information (or simply “signaling”) it is intended the information exchanged among user equipment and nodes of the packet-switched mobile networks to ensure that user equipment are correctly linked to the packet-switched mobile network. Signaling information concerns establishment, control and managing of the connection between a user equipment and the network, in contrast to user information, which concerns the actual content data exchanged between the user equipment and the network based on the specific type of service requested by the user equipment.
The signaling traffic increasing is caused by several factors, such as for example the “always-on” IP-connectivity required by smartphones, tablets and generally modern mobile devices, the widespread availability of applications for mobile devices (“Apps”) which require very frequent periodic updates (e.g., every minute), and the growth of machine-to-machine (M2M) devices.
Compared to the previous broadband mobile networks (such as GPRS and 2G), the current 2G/3G and LTE networks have to manage a substantially higher amount of signaling traffic. In some cases the amount of signaling exchanged between a network and a user equipment may exceed the amount of user information exchanged therebetween. This may cause a signaling traffic congestion, capable of overburdening the core sections of the network.
This drawback is further exacerbated since a same user equipment may be used in a very different way from user to user, exploiting a very wide range of different applications (and thus, generating a very wide range of different signaling).
The signaling traffic issue in packet-switched mobile networks has been faced in the literature.
For example, European patent application EP 2448361 discloses a system to reduce the signaling load in a cellular network by introducing an auxiliary device which holds data packets in order to minimize connections according to a pre-determined rule.
The Ericsson description “Ericsson Packet Core Network Overview”, 1/1551-HSC 113 02 Uen K, 2 Dec. 2012, provides an overview on how 2G/3G and LTE networks operate. In order to face signaling problems, this document suggests that the HW shall not exceed the 80% of CPU load capacity of the communication board available on the GGSS and PGW nodes.
The document “Addressing the App Signaling Storm—Improve Network ROI and Customer Experience” by Marc Price, CTO Americas and VP Technology, OPENET, 26 Dec. 2012, suggests to avoid signaling congestion by limiting the number of signals directly from the user equipment.